Hundreds of Colleges Tap Peer-to-Peer Marketplace for Study Materials
A San Francisco startup that has more than 300 colleges and universities in its community is quickly becoming the one-stop shop for class notes, study guides, note cards and more. StudySoup allows students to buy and sell class materials through its peer-to-peer marketplace.
Launched in 2014, the startup already has a community of more than 530,000 students accessing more than a million documents for nearly 250,000 courses, according to the StudySoup website. Pennsylvania State University, for example, has 1,663 documents on the site that cover art, business, foreign languages, math and science. Students can sign up for the service for $11 to $30 a month and search through materials by notetaker, class or professor.
On the business side, the platform is dependent on its “Elite Notetakers,” or students who take and submit notes to StudySoup. Elite Notetakers can earn $300 to $500 per course, depending on the amount of content they submit. In some cases, Elite Notetakers are making more than $1,200 per month in sales, with the top earner making $2,306 in one semester.
StudySoup recently secured $1.7 million in seed funding from Canyon Creek Capital, 500 Startups and other investors. The startup will use the funding to develop the product and for marketing purposes.
To view the available materials by school, visit the StudySoup site.
About the Author
Sri Ravipati is Web producer for THE Journal and Campus Technology. She can be reached at [email protected].